


Strange Hours

by rosa_himmelblau



Series: The Roadhouse Blues [4]
Category: Wiseguy
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 22:22:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15828102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: What do you do when your memories aren't real?





	Strange Hours

  
"What happened?"

It was early-early morning, and Vinnie was nearly asleep. The words came tip-toeing over him, sneaking into his mind, trying to catch him unawares. But even practically unconscious he recognized them. He forced his eyes to open, then turned over to face Sonny, who was lying in Vinnie's bed instead of his own. "I told you already. I thought you were dead."

Sonny stared into his eyes, as if trying to will information out of him. "Yeah. You thought you killed me. But why?"

"Because I thought you were dead!" The circular logic wouldn't satisfy Sonny, but it sounded enough like reason to keep him at bay.

Sonny was glaring at him, but he'd learned already he couldn't force the information out. Or seduce it from him. So now he'd begun talking to him when he was nearly asleep, hoping Vinnie would slip up. "But why? What was I doing in the hospital?"

"I dunno about that," Vinnie admitted. "They must'a figured out you weren't dead and taken you there."

"But why did they think so in the first place?" He was starting to show impatience, so Vinnie changed the game. He sat up, grabbed his pillow, folded it behind his head. It wasn't comfortable, but it was further away from Sonny's mouth, which he suspected was going to kiss him, if all else failed.

"What I don't get is why you're only wondering about this now. It's been all these freakin' years, you **knew** everybody thought you were dead—what did you **think** was going on?" He did not add moron, but his tone said it

That put Sonny on the defensive. He sat up too, dragging the covers with him. "I told you. I woke up in the hospital, doctors, nurses, and one cop. I couldn't even remember my own name. The cop waits 'til everybody else is gone and offers me a deal—he'll get me a free pass for a million bucks. Then it clicked; I knew the guy, and I knew who I was, and I knew I wanted out. So we made a deal."

"But why?" Vinnie kept his voice straight, kept himself from echoing Sonny's impatient tone, or mocking it. "I don't get why this cop would do that for you."

"He didn't do it for me. He wanted a million bucks, and he didn't want to go to jail."

"Why would he go to jail?" Vinnie had already this worked out, but making Sonny tell him kept Sonny from asking him about things he didn't want to talk about.

"Because he was on my payroll, and he figured if his guys had me, I'll sell him out. This way he's got money and he's safe. Nobody was any the wiser, so there wasn't that big a risk."

Yeah, that's it, all spelled out. "So what happened?"

"I told him I'd give him a quarter of a mil, which he accepted. I gave him the name on my phony I.D., he told the hospital that's who I was. Then I sent him to get my I.D."

"How did you know he wouldn't double-cross you?"

Sonny didn't answer for a long time; he just looked at Vinnie as if there were a half million things he **wanted** to say, but wouldn't, wouldn't break their silent truce. "Double-cross me how? I didn't tell him where the money was, just my I.D."

"How did he know he could trust you?"

"You mean besides that I keep my word?" Sonny asked pointedly.

Vinnie gave him a smile. "Yeah, besides that."

"He was the only one who knew my real name. It wasn't like I was getting out of the hospital right then—I got myself transferred to one in Ohio, but the way the world is now, everybody leaves a computer trail. If I held out on the money and he wanted to do something about it, he could've sicced your guys onto me easy. Of course, that would've slit his throat too, but it doesn't mean he wouldn't've done it." Sonny smiled at him, a benign, patient smile. "Now, you got your answers. Where're mine?"

Shit. He'd backassed himself right into that one.

"C'm'on, you thought you'd killed me. You gotta tell me what happened. I hadn't been shot or anything, just a lot of bruises and some broken bones in my hands."

That last part didn't surprise Vinnie, the way they'd been hammering each other. What did surprise him was that Sonny didn't mention the burns on his right hand, the ones that some very talented plastic surgeon had done a very, very good job with—but which were still there. Vinnie didn't know what other ramifications there might be from having a high voltage of electricity go through your body, nerve damage or something. He thought he remembered hearing something about people who had been struck by lightning losing their sense of smell, at least temporarily. But that was hardly the kind of thing you could tell a person was suffering from by looking at them, and he wasn't about to ask Sonny if he could still smell things. Especially not with Sonny looking at him the way he was, as though he might bite him. Besides, Sonny had complained enough about him spraying perfume on himself, his sense of smell must be working now, even if it hadn’t been before. "What **do** you remember?"

"You were selling me out to Patrice," Sonny answered immediately. "Was that why you tried—no, you were—what the hell difference does it make, what I remember and what I don't?"

"Because if I know what you remember, I know where to start. I don't want to have to go all the fuck back to the day we met if I don't have to."

"Yeah, who're you again?" Sonny asked, his voice filled with pissy sarcasm. "And time's a real factor, since God knows when we're getting back home—you could start with the day you were born and probably still have plenty of time to finish. That's not it. You want to know what I remember so you can decide what you can get away with **not** telling me."

Vinnie got up, found his sweatpants and sat down to pull them on.

"Where're you going?" Sonny demanded.

"To the can," Vinnie answered, standing back up.

"So what're you putting your pants on for? We suddenly got a dress code in our bathroom?"

"I'm cold," he answered over his shoulder. "You stole all my blankets." And he slammed the bathroom door behind him.

Vinnie was shaking all over as he stood, unsteadily aiming his dick at the toilet bowl. He could only stay in there so long, and when he came out, the questions would start again, and he was going to have to answer them. There was no way out of it.

Of course he'd thought about how to do this, how to cushion it, how to say it so it wouldn't shock, wouldn't damage their still-fragile relationship. He'd planned the words out carefully, as he drove while Sonny slept, as he waited while Sonny checked them into the latest motel room, as he showered while Sonny went out for food.

"So tell him. What's the big deal? He knows already, he just doesn't remember. Tell him already, get it over with, then you can both move on." _Move on._ "Yeah, Sonny moves on on an airplane to the West Coast and I move on . . . where?" He hated this, hated feeling so needy, and he feared it, too. Weakness was not a character trait Sonny valued. Vinnie couldn't lean on him, couldn't cling to him, or Sonny would be gone before he could blink, and then what? With Sonny gone, what Vinnie saw was himself, in this hotel room, until they broke down the door and dragged him out. He had no momentum; he needed Sonny. Trouble was, he had his own memory problems.

_"You were selling me out to Patrice,"_ had been Sonny's immediate answer to what he remembered. He knew it wasn't true, but it was still there, a pervasive lie that Sonny remembered as the truth. Well, Vinnie had his own lie that wouldn't be unmasked—he had to keep reminding himself that Sonny wasn't dead.

"And how stupid is that? I'm with him practically twenty-four hours a day, you'd think that would be enough to convince me—" Yet even now he was standing there, with Sonny on the other side of the door, wondering if it was true. **Was** Sonny on the other side of the door?

He'd finished urinating, but he stood waiting, waiting, until finally Sonny yelled at him, asking if he was ever coming out, adding, "You can't hide in the bathroom forever," for good measure.

And Vinnie could breathe again. He washed his hands, splashed some water on his face, and went back to the bedroom.

Sonny was still lying in his bed, wrapped in his covers. Vinnie was going to sit down, but instead he started pacing—not really pacing, but moving around the room in short bursts, feeling like a wind-up toy that's forgotten how to go in a straight line but can't quit moving. Sonny watched him silently, if not exactly patiently, maybe sensing the answer to his question was close at hand.

Vinnie stopped abruptly, almost at the far corner of the small hotel room, suddenly flooded with _deja vu._ This frantic almost-pacing was what Sonny had been doing, right before— Vinnie suddenly noticed his hands, the way he was wringing them, and forced himself to stop. 

And then he said it, baldly, with no preamble, no safe cushion. "You tried to kill yourself."

He'd expected an explosion, but when he turned to look at Sonny, all he saw was a puzzled, slightly angry frown.

"What?"

No shock of recognition, no fireworks, just one interrogatory word. Vinnie felt insanely let down. He started to sit on the edge of the bed, but that was too close to Sonny. He went back to pacing, refusing to confront him.

"I said, you tried to kill yourself, you deliberately stuck your hand in a fuse box—"

He'd walked away from Sonny, as far as the little room would allow. He hadn't heard Sonny get off the bed, wasn't expecting to smack into him when he turned to retrace his steps. Vinnie went to push him out of the way, and Sonny punched him in the face.

"You tried to kill yourself, you bastard!" Vinnie shoved Sonny, hard, making him trip back a few steps. "You told me you loved me—you told me you loved me!—then you—" he didn't know why he couldn't seem to say it again. And Sonny hit him again, the look on his face unspeakable with—pain? Fury? Both, most likely. Vinnie knew that look, remembered it so clearly—he didn't want to see it again, but he could think of no way to change it, and there was no going back now. They were going to bed bruised tonight.

In some ways, punching and being punched by Sonny was a comforting thing. At the very least, Vinnie knew exactly what to expect, and how to respond. As long as they were fighting, and it was just the two of them, he didn't need to think about what to say, he knew Sonny wasn't going anywhere, and the adrenaline took away his fear. Even the pain made sense.

Exhausted, both men lay sprawled on the bed. No one had come to break up the fight, probably because their motel room was at the end of the row, and they were two of the very few guests.

Sonny had won the fight, at least technically, because Vinnie had finally just collapsed when the adrenaline rush faded and he started to feel the pain. After staring down at him for a good ten minutes, Sonny offered his hand, his right, the one with the skin grafts that he—what? Didn't think about? How was that possible?

That was Sonny. First you put all the things you didn't want to think about in a box, then you buried the box in the backyard, then you never looked in the backyard again. In fact, you sold the house and moved away, and those thing didn't exist anymore.

When Vinnie was on his feet, Sonny didn't go back to his own bed, but lay down on his back on Vinnie's. Vinnie got in with him. They lay, not touching, breathing hard.

"What do you mean, I—" But instead of finishing his question, Sonny asked something else. "Did I try to take your head off with a golf club?"

For a few minutes Vinnie was simply too baffled to say anything. "No," he said at last, his tone making it as much a question as an answer.

"Too bad. Must've just been something I wanted to do."

"I think you hit me with one of the bar stools, though."

"Oh. Good." Sonny's brightened tone amused Vinnie. "What time is it?"

Vinnie considered asking Sonny more about the golf club, decided he was too tired and possibly didn't want to know at all. He checked the clock on his bedside table. "Nearly six."

Sonny grunted an acknowledgement. "Don't need a work out this morning." His voice was tired, and when he rolled over, Vinnie heard him make an involuntary, pain-filled sound that was probably caused by putting his weight on some new bruises. It occurred to Vinnie to wonder how long it would be until they were too old to settle their problems this way, and what they would do when they were.

They lay facing away from each other, tired, but not sleeping. Vinnie thought he would have slept, if he hadn't been able to feel the wakefulness radiating from Sonny. He stared at the wall, waiting.

"What happened?" Sonny asked. "Your guys grab Aldo and he ratted me out?"

"No, nothin' like that. Aldo got away clean." Vinnie weighed the idea of telling Sonny that he'd been shot by Aldo in Vancouver, and about Aldo's untimely death. Again, exhaustion won out. Besides, improbable as it was, Sonny had genuinely liked Aldo. "Far as I know, nobody's ever found Patrice's body."

"Then what? Why would I want to—? There's gotta be some kind of mistake here."

"It's not a mistake. I was there, I saw you do it." He thought about taking Sonny's hand, showing him— Vinnie pushed that thought away.

"But why?" Sonny demanded. This conversation was weird, each of them talking to a wall instead of to each other. "And why did you keep saying you'd killed me?"

They were perfectly reasonable questions, but ones Vinnie didn't want to answer. He closed his eyes to make it less real. "They—the cops were starting to break down the door, and you and me were arguing." _Finish it,_ the voice in Vinnie's head ordered. "I told you we'd put a video recorder in the banquet room, that we had it on tape, you killing Patrice."

Sonny was quiet—processing this information? Sleeping? Remembering why he'd wanted to kill Vinnie, why he wanted to die himself?

"'I saw you garrote a man in my face,'" Sonny quoted, inflectionless. "Sometimes I hear you— Did you really say that?" 

"Yeah, I said it."

More quiet, something brewing. Vinnie didn't know what, wished he didn't have to think about it. All he wanted to do was sleep.

"Yeah, I remember you looked like you were gonna puke." There was amusement at this, a certain satisfaction.

"You were talking about New Jersey having the death penalty, and—" Vinnie opened his eyes, saw nothing but the wall, said nothing more.

Sonny reached back, stroked Vinnie's shoulder. "Baby, you brought the death penalty with you that day you walked into my office. Mack's guys would've popped me long before your guys ever got a chance to put a needle in my arm." His warmly affectionate voice was completely at odds with the harsh words.

"I hadn't thought of that," Vinnie said, unsure whether to be relieved or appalled.

Sonny yawned, turned, slid over to lay against Vinnie's back. It was a surprise, and a nice one; Vinnie liked feeling Sonny pressed against him, holding him. Sonny didn't say any more about their fight either, and Vinnie couldn't tell if he was just tired, or if he'd lost interest in the subject. The silence should have been a relief, but Vinnie didn’t feel relieved, he felt sick.

He didn't know what to do with his guilt, now that there was no imagined Sonny holding him accountable for his death. Instead he had a very real Sonny who didn't seem to care. It **was** a weight off his mind, but he also felt foolish, and angry. He'd told Sonny everything, and it meant nothing. It left him lost, and somehow empty; all those years of guilt and fear and nightmares had been nothing but a waste of time. Vinnie closed his eyes, trying to seduce sleep to him. He wanted to sleep really bad. He didn’t want to think about—about anything.

He was nearly there when Sonny's voice woke him with gentle, aimless curiosity. "Hey, what'd you lock us in the theatre for, anyway?"

Vinnie put his face in his pillow, hoping to stifle the sound he was making, hoping Sonny didn’t hear him. He didn’t want to have to explain—he didn’t think he **could** explain, since he wasn’t sure himself if he was laughing or crying.


End file.
